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Showing posts with label Liberation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberation. Show all posts

14 September 2011

CIA files depict Malta as Libyan terrorist hub between 1988-1991.

Lockerbie campaigners unimpressed.

Abdelbaset al Megrahi who had been found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, one of the sons of the Libyan leader, after arriving back in Tripoli. Mr al Megrahi was released from the Scottish prison on August 20, 2009.
Malta was a “primary launching point” for Libyan intelligence and terrorist teams transiting Europe, according to a recent compilation of declassified CIA cables dating between 1988 and 1991.
But campaigners for justice in the Lockerbie bombing case have slammed such claims, describing the CIA’s main informant as a “money-grubbing fantasist” who led the CIA by the nose.
The informant quoted extensively in the 255-page document (taken predominantly from declassified CIA cables released in 2008 and compiled by an international organisation) is Abdul Majid Giaka, whose testimony, as an informant, was pivotal in convicting Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, despite the court having cast doubts on Mr Giaka’s credibility and reliability as a witness.
According to Lockerbie campaigner Robert Forrester, the recently compiled cables are so heavily redacted that any effort to corroborate the veracity of intelligence is impossible.
“Giaka was showered with US tax dollars in return for nothing of substance,” he told The Times.
Mr Forrester – who forms part of a group of Lockerbie victim family members who believe Mr al Megrahi was wrongly convicted – also criticised the CIA for showing no indication of having tried to independently corroborate any of the “so-called intelligence”.
The CIA are behind all the dictators and terrorists across the world.

“It really does look like [the CIA] swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker, until it finally dawned on them that he was worthless,” he said.
“These additional papers detailing the CIA’s relationship with Mr Giaka, add little to what is already known and to the doubts which have always hung over this case... Malta has absolutely no reason to think that these documents taint the island’s good name any more than it has been.”
However, he added that it is up to the Maltese government to take “concrete steps” to lift the cloud of Lockerbie which hangs over the island.
“The evidence is there which proves that there is no evidence to support this conviction.”
The connection with Malta and subsequently with Mr Al-Megrahi was made when police recovered from the wreckage items of baby clothing bearing the label ‘Yorkie’ made by a Maltese company. The clothing, traced to a Sliema shop, was found in the suitcase believed to have been carrying the bomb. Though the courts decided that the bomb left from Malta, another theory was that it had been placed on board a London-bound plane at Frankfurt airport before reaching the Pam Am jet that was bound for New York. Some still believe Iran, and not Libya, was behind the bombing.
Mr Giaka, the informant who is also referred to as “P/1” in the intelligence reports, was a Libyan working for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta who decided to cooperate with the CIA in 1988 because he wanted to be relocated and given money to start a new life with his Maltese wife.
In return for months of information gathering and supplying intelligence, he got the CIA to help him get mock-surgery to exempt him from military service back in Libya.
One of the intelligence reports claims that Maltese immigration and airport officials helped Libyan intelligence agents “monitor suspected Libyan oppositionists” in exchange for regular gifts. (Names are not being published for legal reasons.) They were “especially helpful” in helping officials and contacts of Libya’s External Security Organisation (ESO) travel from Malta to Libya without a trace, it was claimed.
Meanwhile, a Libyan living in Malta was used as a conduit to “Maltese Labour Union (a likely reference to the Labour Party) leaders and influential members of the Maltese Nationalist Party”.
The CIA first described Mr Giaka as “intelligent, serious and fairly well composed” as well as committed and capable of passing terrorist-type intelligence on a timely basis.
But the CIA later began to question Mr Giaka’s commitment, saying his financial situation became a major motivating factor in meeting. “[His] procrastination beyond reasonable limits is testing patience,” one report comments.
In his meetings with the CIA, Mr Giaka spoke about the visits to Malta of Mr Al Megrahi and other suspicious Libyan agents. He also speaks about orange-coloured explosives which arrived in Malta while Mr Al Megrahi was here, which were kept stored in a drawer at a Valletta apartment.
In 1991, he was described as “shattered”. He is quoted as having bluntly noted that the Maltese would do anything for money and those at the top of the current government would gladly turn him over if it meant making some cash.
Ultimately, Mr Giaka is described as “a defector from a sensitive position who has served faithfully since his walk-in in 1988” and the CIA concurred that staying in Malta would be very dangerous.
The cables also quote an anonymous Libyan businessman who says the Libyan intelligence presence in Malta would increase significantly in 1989, including personnel within both the ESO and the Libyan military intelligence service. The ESO had recruited a Maltese national employed as a vendor at Luqa airport to assist in acquiring information on persons of interest to the Libyan service, according to the cable.
“This individual prepares biographic and assessment information on personnel of interest to the ESO and forwards his reports to ESO headquarters in Tripoli via a Libyan Arab Airlines courier.”

21 January 2011

Hussein Wanted Soviets to Head Off U.S. in 1991

By: Michael R. Gordon
Published: January 19,2011


WASHINGTON — As the American-led ground offensive in the first war with Iraq got under way on Feb. 24, 1991, Saddam Hussein directed his frustration at an unlikely target: the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Mr. Hussein had dispatched his foreign minister to Moscow in an 11th-hour bid to head off a ground war.

After prodding by Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Hussein had offered to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 21 days. But the United States appeared to be moving ahead with its land campaign.

“The situation is now is getting worse,” Mr. Hussein had written the previous night in an emotional letter to the Soviet leader. “Our nation and army are confused. We are asking ourselves which one is more significant: the Soviet Union’s proposal or the Americans’ threats?”

Speaking to trusted aides, Mr. Hussein was less diplomatic, denouncing Mr. Gorbachev as a “scoundrel” who lacked the will or influence to stay the first President George Bush’s hand. “He tricked us,” Mr. Hussein said. “I knew he would betray us!”

The disclosures about Mr. Hussein’s closed-door deliberations that first day of the Persian Gulf land war are documented in an extraordinary Iraqi archive, which includes 2,300 hours of recorded meetings and millions of pages of documents, that was captured by United States forces after the 2003 invasion.

On the 20th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm (the air campaign began on Jan. 17, 1991), three transcripts of Mr. Hussein’s fateful decisions are being released to coincide with a symposium in Texas on Thursday with Mr. Bush and members of his war cabinet. Only a small portion of the archive, stored in digital form at the National Defense University, has been declassified and opened to outside researchers. (A 2008 government report drew on the three Feb. 24 transcripts, but until now they have not been available in their entirety.)

The war’s history has been well documented, but the three transcripts provide gripping new details of what went on inside the Iraqi command, including Mr. Hussein’s anger at Mr. Gorbachev and his misinterpretation of the United States’ military actions.

With only fragments of information coming from the battlefield and a room full of subordinates eager to applaud the faintest glimmer of success, Mr. Hussein was convinced that the United States lacked the resolve to wage a grinding ground war, the transcripts show.

Even if the Americans suffered just one casualty for every four Iraqi casualties, he boldly predicted, the United States would falter. He lectured his aides that igniting Kuwait’s oil fields to hinder the allied warplanes was a valid military tactic that would not enrage the world. And he and his aides kept misreading the signals about whether the ground assault had even begun.

Studied along with a parallel archive of declassified transcripts at the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A & M University, the captured Iraqi records depict Mr. Gorbachev as eager to engineer a solution that would protect the Soviet Union’s former Iraqi client and make the Soviets an equal partner with the United States in international diplomacy, but unwilling to jeopardize his relations with the Bush administration.

Mr. Bush emerges as a leader who sought to mollify Mr. Gorbachev even as the United States stuck to its demand for the unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

“It is your neighborhood, and some of them are your friends,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Gorbachev in a phone call on Feb. 22, 1991. “We recognize Soviet interests in the area. I want to get our forces out of there as soon as possible. I know how the Iranians and others feel.”

Jeffrey A. Engel, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M, noted that the exchanges showed that “despite heated discussions at the height of war with Iraq, Bush and Gorbachev were fundamentally concerned with safeguarding the future of Soviet-American relations.”

Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, were followed by months of demands that Iraqi forces leave the Persian Gulf nation, resolutions in the United Nations Security Council and a buildup of military might by the Americans and their allies in the region.

After the air campaign began in January, preparations for a possible ground attack in Iraq were stepped up. With the ground war just days away, Mr. Gorbachev mounted a peacemaking effort. Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, arrived in Moscow on Feb. 21. Later that day, Mr. Gorbachev told Mr. Bush in a phone call that he sensed a “serious shift” in Iraq’s position, according to a transcript in the Bush Library.

Iraq, Mr. Gorbachev said, was no longer demanding that resolution of the gulf crisis be linked to other issues in the Middle East. And although the Iraqis had initially demanded that they be given six weeks to leave Kuwait, the Soviets had insisted that the schedule be shortened to 21 days. That timetable still fell short of Mr. Bush’s demands that Mr. Hussein unconditionally remove his troops and pay reparations to Kuwait and that a plan be worked out to deal with Iraq’s poison gas, biological weapons and nuclear arms programs.

Mr. Gorbachev’s diplomatic efforts were undermined on Feb. 22 when the Kuwaiti oil well fires that Mr. Hussein had ordered set — and which he saw as a defensive measure — were described by Mr. Bush in his conversation with the Soviet leader as a “scorched-earth policy” and a reason to not delay military action. Mr. Bush said it should take the Iraqis no more than seven days to pull out of Kuwait, and he issued them an ultimatum to take action before noon the following day.

On Feb. 23, just minutes before the noon deadline, Mr. Bush and the Soviet leader spoke by telephone. Mr. Gorbachev argued that joint American-Soviet action through the United Nations would establish a model for dealing with other crises.

“George, let’s keep cool,” Mr. Gorbachev said. “Saddam wants to stall, but we are not simpletons.”

But Mr. Bush’s patience had been exhausted. “Mikhail,” he said, “I appreciate that spirit, but I don’t want to leave a false impression there is any more time.” If the Iraqis intended to comply with the withdrawal demand, he said, it would need to happen “in the next few minutes.”

In Baghdad the next morning, Mr. Hussein waited anxiously for word from his foreign minister, who had left Moscow. “When will Comrade Tariq arrive?” the Iraqi leader asked. Told that Mr. Aziz had yet to return to Baghdad, Mr. Hussein demanded: “What do you mean he has not arrived?” He read aloud a headline: “Tariq Aziz Arrives in Baghdad.”

As he waited for the minister to show up, Mr. Hussein instructed his subordinates to read a letter he had sent to Mr. Gorbachev the night before, asking the Soviet president why he was not doing more to oppose Mr. Bush’s decision to start the ground war. “We trusted you,” Mr. Hussein wrote.

The conspiracy-minded Iraqi leader seemed both baffled and angry.

“In typical fashion, he suspected that Iraq had been stabbed in the back, this time by disingenuous Soviet mediation efforts,” said David Palkki, the deputy director of the research center that houses the declassified Hussein archives.

Mr. Gorbachev’s reply was not reassuring. He wrote that Mr. Bush did not agree with the Soviet proposal, and that if Mr. Hussein wanted to avoid a ground war, he should immediately issue a statement saying that Iraq would withdraw its forces within 9 to 10 days, which was close to Mr. Bush’s seven-day timeline.

When Mr. Aziz finally arrived to see Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi leader greeted him with a laugh: “Are you up to surprises like Bush?”

To elude American warplanes, Mr. Aziz had returned via Jordan and traveled by road to Baghdad. Like two teenagers discussing the latest muscle car, Mr. Hussein and his foreign minister talked about how fast it was possible to drive on Iraq’s roads.

“We were going 220 on the highway,” Mr. Aziz said, referring to kilometers. That translates to more than 130 miles per hour.

Neither official put much hope in getting help from Iraq’s neighbors. One aide asked about Iran, whose eight-year war with Iraq had ended in 1988. “We are done dealing with the Iranians this time,” Mr. Aziz said. Added Mr. Hussein: “Like all new revolutions, they talk too much.”

With little accurate intelligence, Mr. Hussein and his command failed to grasp their adversary’s strategy. The Iraqis believed an American amphibious landing — a giant feint intended to distract Iraqi troops — was likely.

And Mr. Hussein initially mistook some probing actions by the American military as signs that a major attack had been mounted and contained. “If this is the initial shock,” Mr. Hussein said, “then the attack has failed.”

But as the day wore on, the seriousness of the predicament became more apparent. Frustrated at their inability to negotiate a compromise on their terms, the Iraqi officials speculated that casualties that the United States would suffer in a ground attack would lead Mr. Bush to soften his demands.

“Let us pray to God to grant us success to slaughter any number of them,” Mr. Aziz said. “That is what is going to help us get results.”

“Let them come to Karbala city,” Mr. Hussein said confidently. “It will become their cemetery.”

18 January 2011

CIA Red Cell special memorandum on ”What If Foreigners See the United States as an ’Exporter of Terrorism’”

keywords: WikiLeaks, U.S. Intelligence, U.S. Army, National Ground Intelligence Center, NGIC, classified, SE- CRET, NOFORN, Red Cell.
restraint: Classified SECRET//NOFORN (US)
date: February 2, 2010
group: author: CIA Red Cell
author: CIA Red Cell

Description
This CIA ”Red United States is an exporter of terrorism; ’Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens.’ The report looks at a number cases of US exported terrorism, including attacks by US based or financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists. It concludes that foreign perceptions of the US as an ”Exporter of Terrorism” together with US double standards in international law, may lead to noncooperation in renditions (including the arrest of CIA officers) and the decision to not share terrorism related intelligence with the United States.

SECRET//NOFORN

A Red Cell Special Memorandum 5 February 2010

What If Foreigners See the United States as an “Exporter of Terrorism”? (S//NF)

Much attention has been paid recently to the increasing occurrence of American-grown Islamic terrorists conducting attacks against US targets, primarily in the homeland. Less attention has been paid to homegrown terrorism, not exclusively Muslim terrorists, exported overseas to target non- US persons. This report examines the implications of what it would mean for the US to be seen increasingly as an incubator and “exporter of terrorism.” (S//NF)

Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens.
Late last year five young Muslim American men traveled from northern Virginia to Pakistan allegedly to join the Pakistani Taliban and to engage in jihad. Their relatives contacted the FBI after they disappeared without telling anyone, and then Pakistani authorities arrested them as they allegedly attempted to gain access to al-Qa’ida training facilities.
In November 2008, Pakistani-American David Headley conducted surveillance in support of the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba (LT) attack in Mumbai, India that killed more than 160 people. LT induced him to change his name from Daood Gilani to David Headley to facilitate his movement between the US, Pakistan, and India.
Some American Jews have supported and even engaged in violent acts against perceived enemies of Israel. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jewish doctor from New York, emigrated to Israel, joined the extremist group Kach, and killed 29 Palestinians during their prayers in the mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron which helped to trigger a wave of bus bombings by HAMAS in early 1995.
Some Irish-Americans have long provided financial and material support for violent efforts to compel the United Kingdom to relinquish control of Northern Ireland. In the 1880s, Irish-American members of Clan na Gael dynamited Britain’s Scotland Yard, Parliament, and the Tower of London, and detonated bombs at several stations in the London underground.In the twentieth century, Irish-Americans provided most of the financial support sent to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The US-based Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID), founded in the late 1960s, provided the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) with money that was frequently used for arms purchases. Only after repeated high-level British requests and then London’s support for our bombing of Libya in the 1980s did the US Government crack down on Irish-American support for the IRA. (S//NF)

SECRET//NOFORN

American Freedoms Facilitate Terrorist Recruitment and Operations (S//NF)
Primarily we have been concerned about Al-Qa’ida infiltrating operatives into the United States to conduct terrorist attacks, but AQ may be increasingly looking for Americans to operate overseas. Undoubtedly Al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups recognize that Americans can be great assets in terrorist operations overseas because they carry US passports, don’t fit the typical Arab-Muslim profile, and can easily communicate with radical leaders through their unfettered access to the internet and other modes of communication.
Terrorist groups such as Al-Qa’ida have surely noticed the ease with which Headley was able to travel multiple times on a US visa between the US, Pakistan, and India without arousing suspicion from officials.
Al-Qa’ida and other extremist groups have also probably noticed that the US Government has been more concerned with preventing attacks on the US by homegrown terrorists or foreigners than with Americans going overseas to carry out attacks in other countries. Most foreign governments do not suspect that American citizens would plot or perpetrate attacks against their citizens within their borders. Foreign terrorists have recruited homegrown US extremists for attacks abroad and are likely to increase the use of this method because so far it has slipped below the radar of the governments of the US and other countries.
The ubiquity of internet services around the world and the widespread use of English on popular websites such as Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and various blogs enable radical clerics and terrorist recruiters to bypass America’s physical borders and influence US citizens. For example, a self-proclaimed recruiter for the Pakistani Taliban reportedly contacted the five men in northern Virginian via YouTube and then exchanged coded emails with the group. Terrorists apparently know that detection is especially difficult in cases where the potential US recruit is not affiliated with any known terrorist group. (S//NF)
Impact on Foreign Relations if US Seen as “Exporter of Terrorism” (S//NF)
If the US were seen as an exporter of terrorism, foreign partners may be less willing to cooperate with the United States on extrajudicial activities, including detention, transfer, and interrogation of suspects in third party countries. As a recent victim of high-profile terrorism originating from abroad, the US Government has had significant leverage to press foreign regimes to acquiesce to requests for extraditing terrorist suspects from their soil. However, if the US were seen as an “exporter of terrorism,” foreign governments could request a reciprocal arrangement that would impact US sovereignty.
Foreign regimes could request information on US citizens they deem to be terrorists or terrorist supporters, or even request the rendition of US citizens. US failure to cooperate could result in those governments refusing to allow the US to extract terrorist suspects from their soil, straining alliances and bilateral relations.
In extreme cases, US refusal to cooperate with foreign government requests for extradition might lead some governments to consider secretly extracting US citizens suspected of foreign terrorism from US soil. Foreign intelligence operations on US soil to neutralize or even assassinate individuals in the US deemed to be a threat are not without precedent. Before the US entered World War II, British intelligence carried out information operations against prominent US citizens deemed to be isolationists or sympathetic to the Nazis. Some historians who have examined relevant archives even suspect that British intelligence officers assassinated Nazi agents on US soil. (S//NF)

SECRET//NOFORN

Foreign perception of the US as an “exporter of terrorism” also raises difficult legal issues for the US, its foreign allies, and international institutions. To date, the US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and instead, has pursued Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) with other countries to ensure immunity for US nationals from ICC prosecution. The US has threatened to terminate economic aid and withdraw military assistance with countries that do not accede to BIAs.
If foreign regimes believe the US position on rendition is too one-sided, favoring the US, but not them, they could obstruct US efforts to detain terrorism suspects. For example, in 2005 Italy issued criminal arrest warrants for US agents involved in the abduction of an Egyptian cleric and his rendition to Egypt. The proliferation of such cases would not only challenge US bilateral relations with other countries but also damage global counterterrorism efforts.
If foreign leaders see the US refusing to provide intelligence on American terrorism suspects or to allow witnesses to testify in their courts, they might respond by denying the same to the US. In 2005 9/11 suspect Abdelghani Mzoudi was acquitted by a German court because the US refused to allow Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a suspected ringleader of the 9/11 plot who was in US custody, to testify. More such instances could impede actions to lock up terrorists, whether in the US or abroad, or result in the release of suspects. (S//NF)

This memo was prepared by the CIA Red Cell, which has been charged by the Director of Intelligence with taking a pronounced "out-of-the-box" approach that will provoke thought and offer an alternative viewpoint on the full range of analytic issues. Comments and queries are welcome and may be directed to the CIA Red Cell at (703) 482-6918 / 482-0169 or 44462/50127, secure. (C)

CL BY: 0711195
CL REASON: 1.4 (d)
DECL ON: 20350204
DRV FRM: FOR S-06


17 January 2011

Should I stay or should I go?
By: Latif Yahia

Brian Cowen
There are times when the lyrics of certain songs ring true and at this very moment the words of the enduring Clash song ‘Should I stay or should I go’ have never been meant so earnestly as they are for Brian Cowen. At a time when Ireland is facing into the hardest times since most of this generation don’t want to remember, An Taoiseach, is having this very debate with his party members.
Don’t just believe that the title of the song is true in Brian’s case, no, indeed the lines ‘If I go there will be trouble, and if stay there will be double!’ are just as sharp. Either way, with a new Taoiseach at the helm Ireland is in for harsh times, the question I suppose is why Mr Cowen won’t stand down, is it out of a strong sense that he can undo his wrongdoing while he was Minister for Finance? Or is it that he doesn’t want the full scale of his bed-sharing with the likes of Anglo exposed and the only way of making sure that he isn’t exposed at least until after the demise of the present government is to hold his chair.

Brian Cowen And Brian Lenihan

Many things about the last few years in Ireland have addled my brain, Ireland or should I say ‘The Irish’ were famous worldwide and I should probably mention Respected also, for being fighters, what has happened?? Has money made ye all soft?? Not since the farmers marched on Dublin in the 1970’s has Ireland seen any meaningful resistance or opposition to it’s government although I have heard plenty bemoan the situation on the street, but when it comes to the crunch no-one is willing to get out there and make their voices heard, I know that the Irish invented guerilla warfare as such, but unfortunately those tactics don’t work too well on democracy, not that Ireland really has one. The apathy in the Irish Nation to their political parties astounds me, the whole ‘one lot is as bad as the other’ sentiment is really heartbreaking for me to hear, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT THEN!
Very shortly the Fianna Fail/PD coallition will have to call a general election, I would hope that with Brian Cowen at the helm the Irish people would give a resounding NO, and with any luck Mary Harney will not only lose her seat but leave the country for good, how she has kept her chair for so long having done such a disasterous job over the past 12 years is beyond comprehension, but then again maybe we can put it down to the reason we keep seeing the same faces just in different jobs, it’s all about the dirt she has on the rest of them.
They say that ‘you get the Government you deserve’ if that’s the case, well then Ireland is rightly screwed. Ireland needs another revolution, why not? The government it has isn’t working for the people, the opposition are just that, opposition, they have been out of power for so long they wouldn’t know what to do with it if they got it and with as much repect as I have for socialist ideals, I do not believe that a Labour/Sinn Fein government would go down very well with our European partners, especially since they have all the buckets.
So, what to do then, well first things first, get rid of Cowen, at least then you have hopefully stopped the rot, I have faith in Lenihan, I think that the man truly believes in what he is doing and has the country’s best interest at heart, it is just a tragedy that he had to be brought in to clean up Cowen’s mess and he is taking the brunt of it. While I am on the subject, if I were able to give out medals or commendations I would give one to Brian Lenihan, to battle cancer, try to keep a sinking country afloat while your party is in turmoil and have a life with your family all at once, well done Mr Lenihan! I think that the jibes that he has received from Europe were underhanded at best.
If Tunisians can march in enough force to drive their President Bin Ali of 24 years out of the country never mind his office, why is it that the Irish can’t if you compare the reasons for the Tunisian’s revolt to the Irish situation, I think the Irish have more to complain about really, let Europe take the reigns for a while, it’s not like they’re not already here! Pick yourselves up, dust yourselves off, and hold your heads high!

24 December 2010

WTF? – CIA enters WikiLeaks war

The CIA has set up a unique task force dedicated to assessing the impact of the recent deluge of leaked diplomatic cables and military files from the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Reports in the US media describe how the WikiLeaks Task Force - which has quickly earned the acronym “WTF” - has been established to provide an “extensive inventory” of all the information that has come out through a number of high profile leaks of classified information.


Julian Assange – espenmoe/flickr

The task force is thought to be involved in calculating the immediate effects of the releases, such as the US ability to recruit informants.

This new role was widely unexpected given that the CIA is one of the government agencies least effected by the leaks, whose source remains unknown despite the continuing imprisonment of former intelligence officer Bradley Manning.

A reluctance on the part of senior CIA staff to share their intelligence on the same platform from which the leaks were taken has meant that only a few files out of hundreds of thousands refer to CIA activities.

The CIA’s system has always been separate from “SIPRNET” – the Pentagon’s classified worldwide three million-strong network from which the leaks were taken – despite most of the reports having a similar secret-level status.

To some within the agency, the leaks have justified the policy of separation – one that came under severe scrutiny after failed inter-agency communications led in part to the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11 2001.

“[The CIA] has not capitulated to this business of making everything available to outsiders. They don’t even make everything available to insiders. And by and large the system has worked,” an unnamed CIA veteran WAS quoted in the Washington Post.

“The consensus was that there were simply too many people potentially who had access [to SIPRNET],” another source is quoted as saying.

Julian Assange, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Wikileaks, remains on bail in the UK pending an extradition hearing in relation to an alleged case of sexual assault in Sweden.

27 October 2010

Bodies of mutilated
civilians dumped across Baghdad.


The war logs record US soldiers finding tens of thousands of bodies dumped on the streets and thrown into the rivers of Iraq, as violence broke out across the country.

There are 32,563 cases of civilian murders by insurgent groups, according to the files substantially more than the 20,228 killed in IED explosions.

In hundreds of cases there are also references to torture, including that of 32 children.

The violence detailed in the documents is horrific. It includes skin peeled from bodies, acid burns, attacks with electric drills, electrocution, branding, fingers and limbs torn off, eyes pulled out, ears, noses and parts of the face sliced off.

Iraqi workers carry a body to be buried in Najaf - Getty

he first case of insurgent torture was recorded on April 20 2004. It describes a corpse found near Fallujah with indications of mutilation.

The level of violence got worse as the civil war progressed, and was not only confined to adults.

In 2006 in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, a six-year-old boy’s body was found. The log recorded “several small holes originally thought to be gunshot wounds were holes caused by a drill.”

In June 2007 in a Baghdad district, the corpse of a man, around 30-35 years old, dressed in a tan dishdasha was discovered. The flesh of his arm was missing, “as if peeled off”.

Related article: Hundreds of civilians killed at checkpoints

Deaths in Baghdad

Killed for working for the Coalition
In most cases, it is unclear why the victim had been tortured.

There are a couple of instances, however, where signs were hung, pinned or written on the mutilated corpses, giving stark warnings to anyone aiding the Coalition forces.

On June 20 2007, the bodies of two teenage boys were found by an Iraqi officer. They had both been executed with a single gunshot wound to the head, and both exhibited signs of torture. A sign around their necks read “This is what happens when you work for CF”.

One man was found tied to a lamp pole, blindfolded with his hands lashed behind his back. The message inscribed on his body read “Killed for helping the Americans.” The report states that his body bore the signs of torture. His corpse was found in al Karkh in October 2007.

Violence in Baghdad
Many of the bodies exhibiting extreme torture were found in al Karkh, a central district of Baghdad between 2006 and 2009.

In one case, on September 28 2006, a body was found in front of a graveyard by local civilians. Witnesses said the victim had been kidnapped a day earlier outside a ceramics shop by four masked insurgents. He had then been submitted to vicious abuse.

On December 1 2006, a body was found that had been disemboweled. Two weeks later another body, in the same area, was found with the face “cut up” and missing an ear.

In a particularly gruesome example, on February 6 2007, a body was unidentifiable due to the victim’s face being entirely removed, or “skinned”.

Women and children killed
In some incidents, the bodies of women and children are discovered. In one harrowing case, again in the Karkh district of Baghdad, the body of a pregnant woman was found flex-cuffed, bearing the signs of torture. She had been executed with a 9mm round to the head.

In another, a Sunni woman in her thirties was found murdered in her apartment. One of her eyes was missing, and her entire body has been tortured using a drill.

Interactive: All casualties, month by month

Mass Graves
The logs also detail how US troops discovered mass graves – sometimes containing dozens of corpses at a time.

On July 12 2006, a US aircraft spotted a large number of corpses dumped in a quarry in the northern Iraq province of Diyala. Ground troops investigating the grave discovered 19 bodies, badly burned with nitric acid. They later discovered four additional bodies, all male, displaying signs of torture, and killed by a gunshot wound to the head. The group had been kidnapped earlier that day.



24 February 2010

NZ director tackles Iraqi tale
Yahoo!Xtra

Kiwi director Lee Tamahori is back at work in Malta on his latest movie.

The 'Once Were Warriors' helmsman is on location for new action drama, 'The Devil's Double'.

Starring 'Mamma Mia's Dominic Cooper and French star Ludivine Sagnier, the film is based on Latif Yahia’s biographical novel.

Cooper plays both Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday Hussein, and his body double Latif Yahia. Sagnier

plays Sarrab, Uday’s concubine and the secret lover of Latif.

Described as a ordinary man’s struggle in a world of power, deceit, betrayal, violence and seduction, hopes are high for the New Zealand director's latest effort.

When army lieutenant Latif Yahia is summoned from the frontline to Saddam’s palace, he is faced with an impossible request: to be Uday’s ‘fiday’ - his body double - or have his family condemned to death.

With his life on the line, his fate is decided. Latif begins his journey as Uday Hussein, one of Iraq’s most powerful and hated men. He learns to walk, talk and look like him - and he experiences the extravagance of Uday’s world with its fast cars, endless money and easy women.

No word yet on when the film is due out but with two hot young stars, there's plenty of buzz about it already.

04 November 2009

Message From My friend to the World

Consider this, my friend: You are where you are . . . think about it; we are determined by where we are, what we expose ourselves to, our environment. Not just our genetics. Now consider: You are what you eat. Okay now, if what you eat is not grown where you are, what are you??? This site is the realization and release of my 50 years study, work, sojourn on this planet. For 20 of those years I traveled to some two dozen countries, and to a host of Indigenous Nations not recognized by the United Nations (a real Travesty!) working on community-based projects and teaching ecological design, environmental restoration and self-sufficient organic home gardening. In 2005, as part of its 2020 Vision Programme, the United Nations released the Millenium Ecosystems Assessment (MEA). www.millenniumassessment.org. Some 1500 top world class scientists from some 95 countries collaborated over a 5 year period to assess the world’s ecosystems – from Mangroves and Estuaries, to Temperate and Sub-Tropical Rainforests to Savannahs and Prairies to deserts and Tundra. They came to the startling conclusion that we have already irreversibly damaged or destroyed or at least impacted fully two-thirds of the worlds ecosystems. They reckoned one-thirds of the damage has been caused by Industrial Agriculture (the fat cat culprits know who they are and should be ashamed). The MEA got a total of 3 days world media attention. EcosystemsServices http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/esa.html are those services to humankind that Nature provides free of charge. Who says there is no “Free Ride”? There is not a government budget that accounts for ecosystems services. There is not a business plan out there, except for new forests fund, http://newforests.com.au and maybe a handle full of other enlightened long-range vision companies, that has a balance sheet for Nature. What do we mean by ecosystems services, in a nutshell? Clean air, pure water, live soil, carbon, biodiversity, hydrological mediation, climate mediation, seeds, oils, foods, medicines, habitat for All of God’s Creatures, and billions of micro-organisms we know nothing about. My mission is to help people understand their “ecological footprint.” That is, each of us, over our lifetime, uses up a certain amount of all these resources. It is our imperative responsibility to take account of ourselves. We cannot do that without understanding, as the Ancient Greeks did, and all of the Indigenous cultures I have ever been exposed to, that we are all of us connected to the Living Planet (GAIA), and to each other. And so I offer this effort, this mission, this passion, this love, this determination to all those souls there who are awake, all my brothers and sisters, and indeed All My Relations . . .I hope you will take the time to study what this site has to offer and to educate yourself to your duty to the Creator, The Great Spirit, Allah, the Heavenly Father, the Mother Earth Goddess (Gaia) or whatever you choose to call and worship as The One God. If you can help with funding, social networking, or in any capacity please let me know. Thank you. Peace, love, light and laughter be with you. Thomas
www.millenniumassessment.org
Source: www.millenniumassessment.org

22 October 2009

Worldwork and High Impact Leadership
Vision and Relationships

Drs. Max and Ellen Schupbach
in Amsterdam, NL
27th - 29th November 2009

Leadership is no longer an attribute reserved for those on the top of the pyramid; it is a quality that must be developed across all teams, organizations, and communities, and in all individuals who wish to have impact on the creation of our future.
Leaders of the future must have a theoretical understanding of the principles that underlie the unpredictable paths that teams and organizations often take. They must have a set of skills and interventions to bring their visions and goals into the flow of these paths, and the inner work abilities to stay connected to their own inspirations and the sparks that move them.
In order to heighten the impact of their leadership, our future leaders must also be able to translate all of this into the real relationships that surround them, and to collaborate with the networks that they hope to influence.
This seminar will provide

* Worldwork concepts to understand and work with unpredictable, non-linear behaviors of teams and organizations.
* Process-oriented inner work tools to rediscover your vision and spark.
* Deep Democracy concepts and exercises to relate to team-members, independent of their willingness to collaborate.
* Worldwork methods to collaborate with networks to unfold the impact that they can have on your leadership.

Day 1: Vision and Inspiration

Each of us recognizes his or her own personal inspiration, which is ignited when the right spark is lit. The "reality" of our visions is challenged on a 24/7 basis by everyday reality, which at times looks impenetrable and unchangeable. We will show methods that bring together concepts from psychology, modern physics and native wisdom to develop the discipline to stay in "the zone" - the dream path that punctures through the rigidity of the status quo around you.

Day 2: The Magic of Relationships

The actualization of our visions and inspirations, no matter how strongly and clearly we carry them, depends on the ability to manifest them within the context of our relationships. Relationships enhance our visions, and create impact that can change the world. Many projects and teams fail in spite of a strong vision, because of the marginalization of the power of relationships. This day is devoted to discovering and enhancing relationship intelligence in connection to leadership, and the realization of your visions.

Day 3: The Power of Networks

Impactful leadership understands and includes the power of networks. Networks are formal and informal tribes with their own power structures and spirits that create and drive them. Impactful leadership uses tools to include and discover the spirits of these networks.
The Facilitators

Max Schupbach, Ph.D., Dip. PW, CPF, is a co-founder of the Worldwork paradigm. He leads maxfxx, a consulting group active on 4 continents, and coaches executives from the corporate world, governments, and non-profit groups. He is a co-founder and president of the Deep Democracy Institute, an NGO that develops leadership and coaching trainings in the Middle East, Africa and countries of the former Soviet Union.

Ellen Schupbach, Ph.D, Dip. PW, is a Certified Processwork Diplomate who specializes in the personal development of the leader and facilitator. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the spiritual experience of the facilitator and coach. Ellen is a co-founder and executive director of the Deep Democracy Institute, an NGO that aims to create worldwide leadership trainings to develop more collaborative systems in diverse societies.

www.maxfxx.net
www.deepdemocracyinstitute.org
All you need to know

The seminar starts on 9 am on November 27th and ends on 12 pm on November 29th.
Information and Registration:

Elena Chopin, Phone: +31 (6) 55521022
E-Mail: elena.chopin@deepdemocracyinstitute.org

Price: 325,00 Euro


Venue: Hermitage Amsterdam, Auditorium
Amstel 51, 1001 GR Amsterdam
www.hermitage.nl

We understand the spam issue!!!
If you no longer wish to get news from us, simply send an empty email to unsubscribe@deepdemocracyinstitute.org
( Forewarned is Forearmed )
By Latif Yahia


Death Squads 2003 Iraq

As Buddha sat under the tree pondering whether he should reveal the content of his enlightenment to the world, I sit at this computer debating whether or not I should give you all this next piece of Information.
I have tried to give this piece of information to the authorities but, as always, because I am not on their payroll and they don't like what I have to say, they ignore me and disparage my credibility.
The fact is that I don’t like this information any better that the next guy, but it's the truth and it's coming.

AL-Hakem in Iran 2002

Before I begin, I want you to understand something, yes I am called a Sunni, but my mother is Kurdish and my sister married a Shia, before the American invasion in 2003 we did not have segregation. I celebrated Christmas with my Christian friends, we would make Harisa (a Shia dish made around the time of the Ashur) for the Shia festivals and eat alongside them, and there was no problem. We all lived in symbiosis, each had a place and we all just got along. Yes Saddam Hussein was called a Sunni also, but do you really believe that every person in his government and army was Sunni also? There were Kurds, Shia, Christians in his government and he was an equal opportunities killer too, he cared little for your ethnicity, just for his chair.

Since 2003 in Iraq there are Death Squads, these groups of Iranian backed Shia militias have orders to kill all Sunni Arabs in Iraq, this in itself is horrific, but it is not just the slaughtering of innocent people that is happening. These Death Squads mutilate and desecrate the corpses of their victims, some are decapitated, others have their eyes gorged out, some are killed with power tools. Why the barbarity? It is the belief of these Shia that they must bring on the second coming, the Mehidi, that the more blood they spill the quicker the onset of the second coming will be.
So far the Sunnis that have been killed are Army Officers that served during the Iran/Iraq war, any educated people, doctors, engineers, teachers, professors or Judges.
To you and I this is an unbelievable ideology, but these people believe this is the only way as you and I believe the sky is blue and George Bush is an idiot.
Osama Bin Laden is renowned for being a fundamentalist Islamist but he pales in comparison to the Mehidi Militias. When I was in the Iran/ Iraq war I saw them first hand, we had heavy tanks and artillery, they had swords and their little blue keys to paradise, and they kept coming, and coming, and coming. Eight years we fought that war and millions of lives were lost, we were strong but they feared nothing and that made them nigh on invincible.


It is easy for us to sit back and look at these Mullahs and think that they are stupid or think only for their religion. These men think far in advance, while we are thinking about where we might go on holiday this year, they are thinking about how they might have to fund their army or militias in twenty years time.
In the '80's during the Iran/Iraq war, Iran sent out to the West refugees, not all of these refugees were that, in fact some of these so called refugees were actually Iranian Intelligence. They were given asylum here in the West and they lived quietly, working away and building their companies and businesses. They were given extra money by the Iranian government to buy buildings invest in the stock market etc. It is hard to estimate how much they have actually accumulated over the past twenty or so years, but certainly enough for their task ahead.
Iraqi's in general do not believe in suicide bombings, not that they don't believe in the reason behind it, just they wouldn't sacrifice themselves in that way, yes they might fight with guns at least they would have a 50/50 chance of survival, but to actually blow themselves up? No. The Iranians do.
In the past six months these Death Squads have been filtering out of Iraq through Iran with the help of the Iranian government. Why? For several reasons, they have enemies in the West that they would like exterminated, people who have in the past done or said something about the Iranian Mullahs or government. Members of the Iranian opposition, journalists that have done stories that may have put Iran in a bad light, the reasons vary but the list is there and there are over a hundred names on it.
They come to the west and apply for asylum as Iraqi Sunnis, once they have been granted asylum they start their search for the names on the list, so far these Death Squads have reached Jordan, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and Syria in the middle-East. In the West they are in the USA, Canada, Australia, Austria, UK, France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Ireland and Cyprus.
I do not wish to cause a panic; these murderers are not here for you or your family, unless you're on the list. What is frightening is the bigger picture; Iran at this moment in time is pumping money into every Shia enclave around the world making them more powerful, why? To bring the Persian Empire back to the world. As odd as it may sound they have not forgotten or forgiven those involved in the fall of the Persian Empire and they want revenge no matter how long it may take. When the time comes they will liquefy their assets here in the west, and enable their suicide bombers and then we will know the truth of their power in the world.
At this moment in time Iran has the Jaish Al- Quds ( the Army of Jerusalem) it is 1 million strong, within it there is The Martyrs Brigade, they are 120,000 and 50% of them are here in the West they speak Arabic fluently with an Iraqi accent and have claimed asylum as Iraqi Sunnis.
The purpose of this Army is to remove Israel from the map and to return Jerusalem and the Holy land to the Muslims.

At this time it may look like America is sounding it's war drums against Iran, this is nothing but smoke and mirrors to continue the "war on Terror", America will not hit Iran at least not in the near future, they have business together albeit under the table. Like 9/11 and the Madrid bombings our governments knew of the threat but decided to ignore the warnings or to do anything about it, I am issuing you the warning so that you know.

In Iraq it is not in America's interest to try to change anything, I will give you an example, before the Invasion in 2003 there was an Iranian called Bayan jabr Solach he called himself Iraqi opposition and sat in Syria for 25 years. He was a member of the Iranian backed Al- Dahwa party, when the Americans invaded he put himself forward as advisor to Al-Badr for his militia, the Americans gave him an Iraqi name Bayan Al-Zubaidi and made him Minister of homeland security. He then proceeded to kick out all of the Sunnis in his Ministry and replace them with people from the Al-Badr militia; he also employed 1,500 Al-Badr devotees in the Iraqi police force, giving them all high ranking positions.

Bayan jabr Solach 2005 in Iraq

Each Iraqi official has two American advisors that are constantly by their side, when Al-Zubaidi formed his death squads these American Advisors took the news to the American government, the Foreign Minister, the CIA and the Pentagon, they believed that Al-Zubaidi would be removed from the Iraqi Interim government, unfortunately they were told it was none of their business and were removed from their positions. Their names are; Mark Karm and the other Rick Clay, they were rewarded for their honesty and honour by being suspended from their jobs and recalled to America.
After the Elections in Iraq AL-Zubaidi was made finance Minister and repeated the process of ethnically cleansing the Sunnis from his new Ministry. In addition he opened the 10th floor of his Ministry as a place of torture and murder.
He also completely forgot his 25 years in Syria and now condemns the Syrians for letting the "terrorists" through their borders.
On a different note he also holds both British and American citizenship.

To be continued…


New Iraq

this video shows how the death squads and Militias supported by Iran are brutal in the exercise of their agenda +18 film

16 July 2009

Truth Hurts!!
Latif Yahia in Trinity College Dublin-Irland

I will never stop fighting for what I believe and for the people that are going through Hell in their lives for disagreeing with what America is doing.
My book is banned because I wrote the truth about the CIA and what they did to me in the West after my flight from Iraq, the ten and a half months I spent in a covert CIA prison in Austria, and the torture I was subjected to, and this all well before anyone even heard the word "rendition". It also explains why after 18 years outside Iraq, I am still stateless, I have no country and no citizenship.
Because they tried to make me their dog like the puppets that they installed in Iraq and I refused this is why they make my life hell anywhere that I go.
The Iraqi people have lost a lot, the war in Iraq has changed them irrevocably, Iraq will never be the same again.
I decided to put my book for everyone to read for free on my blog because firstly it was nigh impossible to get in America and secondly all my proceeds from this book are going to charity, but the biggest reason I put it online is so that everyone around the world has access to it, I hope that it will open the eyes of people to the American administration and what they do in the name of the American people.
I would like to dispell the myth of America the benevolent, yes America helps other countries, to attain membership to the EU, with big business etc, but none of these things are free. America always has a price, opening the airports of a supposedly neutral country to its army for example Shannon airport in Ireland, installing missile bases, low price even free oil for 100 years being just some of its charges. America is not about humanity it is about business!
I have led an extraordinary life, I know this only too well, but my story has been manipulated also, during the run up to the invasion I was a fixture on most TV stations, I was held up as living proof of how tyrannical Saddam Hussein was, I was never allowed to speak about my life "after" Iraq. It didn't suit their agenda, when I became tired of the same ol' questions, they tried a new tack, to ask me about my life since then, my peace mission, my fight for a nationality but in the end it would always revert back to Uday, Saddam and that would be the only part that they would show, my real life, the one that I have spent nearly 18 years living is not of interest.....
I hope you enjoy reading my book,
Best regards,

Dr.Latif Yahia.
Ph.D International Law
Globel Human Rightsand Activis

24 April 2008


President of the USA ?
If Obama was to become President of the USA what a wonderful thing that would be, although it is not impossible, for there is nothing truly impossible, it is highly improbable. Obama the first non-white American President wouldn't that just be something to behold, I would like to believe that he would change American foreign policy, pay more attention to the American economy, social housing and health care, pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and mend bridges with Nations that may have been slighted by the "with us or against us" attitude of the present President. I have not completely lost hope.

As for Mrs Clinton, well yes, as the next best thing to Obama certainly, also a first for America, the first female President, she has a lot of experience in policy making as she divulged recently. But are the American people truly ready for a "First" America has always been the place to go to, the role model and in so many ways the forerunner except in this regard, so will the American people vote in the first Afro American President, the first Female President or do they go with what they know? I think they'll go with what they know, military service, tough talking, I'll keep you safe from the bad guys, high alert, strong Eisenhower type. After all they do love movies.
When I first saw Mr Bush running for election I turned to my wife and said "that man is a war monger" I was proven right, I do not take pleasure in my premonition, far from it! My prediction for McCain makes Bush look like an angel, if McCain is elected America will fall like the Soviet Union, California will be the first break away state, Arnie has always wanted to be President of somewhere and with the largest economy why not? Laugh if you will but always remember truth is stranger than fiction.

Best regards,
Latif Yahia

15 March 2008

American CIA behind all of this Terrorism ? across the world!


Secrets of the CIA, the evil operations covertly carried out by the CIA across the world!
CIA behind all of this Terrorism ?
Is the COLD WAR really over? Was it ever real? Here's a good place to start your research!

President Kennedy began to end the Vatican’s ... all » hoax known as “the Cold War,” the American CIA and Russian KGB having secretly worked together since World War II. Why? Because the appointed time has arrived for the Jesuit General to destroy both the Dome of the Rock and the Al AqsaMosque in Jerusalem, secretly using his CIA/Nazi-trained, Masonic Zionist Mossad in conjunction with his CIA/Nazi-trained,Masonic Islamic Intelligence Agencies, including Osama bin Laden’s MAK and Pakistan’s ISI, while shrouded in the confusion of a huge aerial war. This will enable the General’s crusading Knights Templars (the present day Shriner Freemasons)to rebuild Solomon's Temple for the Pope & his Vatican. And how could the Black Pope destroy these Moslem Mosques, they comprising the third most important Islamic religious site in the world behind Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and Medina, without causing an uncontrollable Moslem holy war, called a “jihad”, resulting in the destruction of Pope Pius XII’s creation of Zionist Israel? (Osama bin Laden having been directed, financed and trained by the CIA for at least ten years — just like Jesuit-trained and CIA-financed Fidel Castro before he, like bin Laden, became a false enemy of the CFR controlled American government.)Islamic Intelligence operatives under the domestic control of CIA notoriously instructed as Islamic pilots at the Venice Airport (a Florida facility used by the CIA since 1948) in order for Archbishop Egan’s controlled American Press to spread the prepared news release that the doomed airliners were hijacked by “Arab terrorists”in the employ of bin Laden when in fact, to the horror of the American pilots, the airliners had been taken over and guided to their targets, remotely controlled by American Military Intelligence operatives overseen by the Black Pope’s CIA/NSA. This attack was an act of war carried out by the slaves of the Black Pope, both domestic and foreign, thereby enabling the White Pope’s American fascist puppet, George W. Bush,while the tools of the Jesuit Order have tyrannically implemented domestic martial law by means of the "Patriot Act"in U.S.& ”Bomb Bill C-36 Act”in Canada. God help us!

08 January 2008

Trinity College Dublin-Irland


Hist freshers deal with terrorism
Darren Mooney & Daniel Costigan

The College Historical Society held its annual R’n’L debate on the controversial topic of political violence or terrorism on Wednesday April 4th. Organised exclusively by the Records and Libraries sub-committee, the debate was a roaring success.

This Junior Freshman-run debate was quite an interesting departure from the normal discussions that take place in the chamber during the year.



















Dr Latif Yahia at the Hist

The vibrant and varied discussion of political violence during the debate was a fantastic reflection on the R’n’L. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” commented Hist Auditor James O’Brien. “The energy and enthusiasm shown by the first-years is just amazing.”

The motion – “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” meant that the speakers didn’t address the House in the usual adversarial manner.

The debate quickly became an invitation for speakers to advance from the motion and tackle more broad and varied concepts. Ideas about the pejorative use of the word “terrorist”, subjective Western value judgements and the need to come up with objective criteria by which to define a terrorist were discussed. The debate also challenged the audience to question the violent foundation of western democracies and further used varied and unique analogies comparing terrorism to beating someone to death in a night-club, or pondering if the photogenic nature of the victims is what makes us feel so disgusted at the concept. Is killing killing or is terrorism something beyond that?

The highlight of the night was former body double for Uday Hussein, Dr Latif Yahia, asserting that the so-called Democratic Nations didn’t have the principles they so strongly advocated. Dr Yahia alleged widespread corruption, hypocrisy and abuse within the West and challenged us to revise our views of “terrorists” as depicted through our news services. “Two things make the Terrorist,” he warned the audience: “The politician … and the media.” At the time of printing, Dr Yahia’s speech has been downloaded over 2500 times from the Hist’s website, thehist.com.

Students themselves grappled on whether it was possible to justify terrorism, or if they were simply “psychopaths” or “impressionable idiots”. One student speaker assured the crowd that “terrorism is not only justifiable, but it’s also effective”. Everyone had a different view and there were no two speeches alike on either side throughout the debate.

The debate was a melting pot of different ideas – with speakers disagreeing on what a terrorist was. There was even some discussion as to whether one of the guests, Deirdre Clancy, was a terrorist herself after her disabling of a military jet at Shannon in 2003. Or, as Village columnist Harry Browne suggested, was she a freedom fighter?

The massive variety in the guests and speeches make this debate the best R’n’L debate in a long time.

Downloads:-
file icon Dr. Latif Yahia
2nd Proposition. Global human rights activist and former body double for Uday Hussein, author of "The Black Hole", "I was Saddam's Son" and "The Devil's Double", PhD in International Law.







01 January 2008

This is Trailer of forthcoming documentary film tells the story of three people's experiences with the Irish legal system and the corruption that lies within. Each one a ... victim of the greed and arrogance of the Irish legal profession and the inability to receive justice through the court system. This film is a precursor to the feature documentary "Forty shades of Conspiracy" which after a six year investigation lifts the lid on the corruption in the government, civil service, police force and department of justice in Ireland a supposedly democratic country. Based on the forthcoming book of the same name to be released late 2009,Made and financed by Latif Yahia ..
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From the Publisher :- Forty Shades of Conspiracy The Sequel To The Black Hole, a True Story of the illusion of Democracy in Europe and how the American CIA are behind Every Door of Power. Latif Yahia was drawn to the Emerald Isle after remember what so many Doctors, Engineers and Contractors that he had met in Iraq had told him about their homeland. Looking for a country to take him in and welcome him as its own in 1997 Latif booked his flight to Dublin, Ireland's Capital city, using another assumed identity he went about destroying Latif Yahia and his Uday connections, surely this time he could be free of Iraq and all the pain that it had brought to him. Having settled into a comfortingly mundane routine Latif now Kaled was beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe this time it would work and he could finally live a quiet and normal life, hope unfortunately was to fade as his past caught up with him, but this time not in the form of the CIA, this time it was a woman and hell hath no fury like this woman scorned. Pandora's box was opened and all that Latif had hoped to leave behind came like a torrent, suddenly the Irish authorities were aware of his presence, with their close ties to America it did not take the CIA long to follow and the game continued... Because of his opposition to the war on Iraq in 2003 and the American's use of Shannon airport, Latif Yahia is still stateless after 16 years of exile in the West.*****[Special Limited Edition] (Hardcover) in November 25, 2009.
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13 January 2007

{( Mama America )}

By. Latif Yahia


Daddy Bush watching the world

In a few short years we have seen our world change dramatically, irrevocably.
We all have heard the reasons given for these changes, the new laws and the lessening of our human rights.
I the age of Big Brother, when our bank accounts are scrutinised, telephone conversations monitored and our every movement tracked by CCTV in every street and shop or by following the little footsteps left behind by our mobile phones.
How did we let this happen? Instantly, you will pinpoint September 11th 2001 as the day the world changed and indeed it did, but these changes to our lives were happening long before the fall of the twin towers.
Technology is not at fault, it is, as it is used. It can have an extremely positive or negative effect dependant on the user. As much as technology can be used to contain and confuse us, to bring us "the official line", there are people out there, journalists, broadcasters and producers who want to show us reality, they show the live footage, the unedited very shocking truth. A truth that cannot be disparaged.

"We Love Iraq" Mr. Rumsfeld meets Saddam in 1983

With new mobile phone technology we are instantly transported, involved in the moment, anyone and everyone is the cameraman and the footage can be as shocking as the Asian Tsunami, or as disquieting as the shadowy underground figures of the London tube bomb survivors filing out of a smoke filled tunnel.
It was once the case that everyone in the Mid-East would listen to Western Radio and Television if and when they could. For a long time in many countries it was illegal to do so and this in turn reinforced the belief that everything that was reported on these Western Stations was infallible, undoubtedly true and accurate. But now as I flip between western and mid-eastern channels, I find a disparity, they may be showing the same pictures but the words do not always fit.
The mid-east now relies less on western media, it sees it for what it is, controlled and contrived just as our own channels were, giving the "official line" making sure we see it their way.
Wars are not just fought on the battlefields; they are fought in your living room, at your breakfast table and on your way to work.

There have always been "terrorists" in our midst, it just depended which side you were on and to whom you were speaking. One man's terrorist was another's freedom fighter.
Let's look at the who? And moreover the why? Of this situation.
Today the terrorists at the top of everyone's lists are Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
All terrorists need funding and although Bin Laden is independently wealthy, he was once trained, armed and supported by America.

The Family Made by the CIA

When the world had two Super-powers, America was only too happy to keep Bin Laden on their books, he was their boy as long as he kept fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. So he did and eventually he won, so why then should he turn against his partner in victory?
Another American trainee was Saddam Hussein, again when it was deemed that the then Socialist President of Iraq was somehow a threat to Capitalism, Saddam was trained, armed and supported by America to remove this Socialist threat.
Now there is no Socialist threat, the last bastion of Communism is on America's doorstep, Cuba; it is only a matter of time.
There is no need to take Cuba by force, Mr. Castro is ageing and the clock is ticking until the gate is open and America will just walk in.
This is the "New Empire", each civilisation has had their time in the spotlight and Mr. Bush is gonna make "darn sure" that this is his.

Since the conception of America four hundred or so years ago it has needed an adversary.
It began with the Native Americans whose presence on their own land was not to be tolerated and still to this day are quarantined on reservations.
The next foe to America was Britain, (they have since made up and become rather good friends) and as the British Empire began America refused to be a part of it, after all, they had just fled Europe hadn't they?

The Soviet Union was to be America's greatest Nemesis, it went against everything that America stood for and there was no room in this world for two "Super-powers". America fought against it any and everyway that it could, it created Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Mubarak to overthrow their communist leaders in the middle-east and the world was theirs.

But now there is no adversary. Or is there?
Islam is the new threat to the American way, after all it has communist principles doesn't it? Communal funds, interest free banking, the ideas of shared wealth and that high consumerism is bad for us, not just spiritually but environmentally. In the world of Islam the credo of Richard Greco "greed is good" does not stand.
Islam is not perfect but it is the last belief system to have a strong and numerous following and is therefore dangerous.

America needs business, capitalism is the life blood of the country. Americans are the highest consumers in the world, but they need us to consume too. We are needed to consume their products; we are invited to indulge in their way of life because there is none better. Buy more than you need, eat more than you hunger for, everything is an excess and it must stay that way because if we don't buy, their economy won't survive. But they also need war and conflict because even though we may buy their cars and their clothes and buy into the lifestyle, the big money is in weapons.
Without conflict there is no market for weaponry, no testing ground for new ideas, tanks, and bombs.
A famous example of this is during the Iran/Iraq war, America was selling Iran the weaponry and selling Iraq the satellite intelligence on where it was being transported to and stored by the Iranians.

Today the Iraqi Army is reformed with American training, weaponry and uniforms; the same applies to the police force.
Iraq is paid approximately six dollars a barrel for it's oil, which is shipped to the oil refineries in America, processed and sold back to Iraq at $60 a barrel.
This is democracy? It is if the Iraqi government are in agreement. A government for the people, elected by the people. Well some of the people anyway. The "New Government" has managed to sequester more money in their short term than Saddam did during his thirty-five years reign. Saddam may have been a dictator, but each morning Iraq woke with a purpose, each had their job, their business and money in their pockets.
Now there are no jobs, no prospects unless you want to work for America. Water is limited and electricity is available to your home for one hour each day.
Saddam may have been a tyrant but to most of the Iraqi people now he is a prophet.
As America and Britain celebrate a job well done in Iraq, bringing democracy to the Iraqi people wasn't easy. The New Government attend to the matters at hand, how to carve Iraq up; the two main proponents of this course of action are of course the Shia and the Kurds.
The logic behind their move is that as both factions have oil in their perceived territories, that they should form federal republics one to the North in what they would hope to one day call "Kurdistan" and the other in the South, suggestions for the new name for this area are varied but all have a common theme, "Islamic Federal Republic of the South of Iraq". Another common theme in this lunacy is that both factions are only too willing to leave Central Iraq barren; there are no common economic policies, no shared governmental funds, and no Central government. It is a free for all, lands grab and all the oil and power that goes with it.

The message from Messrs. Bush and Blair is coming loud and clear whether it has been delivered blatantly or subliminally, if you are not white, Christian or western return to your country of origin because it is not safe for you here in the west.
Even as I am writing this new plans are being made to revoke the naturalisation/citizenship of British people who have been given a gift of citizenship by the Queen. The argument for the revocation is that when the Queen granted the citizenship she was unaware that they were or would be a threat to Britain and that the revokee's were in fact disrespectful to the Queen. Many of these people are facing death sentences in their country of Origin which was why they fled in the first instance.
To return them is actually an act against Human Rights.
When you read something about people being issued with death sentences, if you are not middle-eastern or have no experience of the regimes, whether they are kingdoms or republics, it is shocking.

To the Western person to receive a death sentence you must have committed a heinous crime and have been judged by a jury of your peers. This is not necessarily the case in the middle-east, yes there are the murderers, the rapist's etc but also to speak out against the King or the President or a member of government, even local government, can land you with a death sentence.

What makes one Dictator different from another?
Well, business. Business is the difference between being dragged kicking and screaming into the UN for offences against Human Rights and not. I am not inferring that all countries violate human rights, some have excellent records but there are countries that openly flout their contempt for their citizens or ethnic minorities that nothing is said about and why? Business. I am not talking about corner shops here; I am talking about big mutli-million if not billion dollar business.
When countries are involved in big business it doesn't really matter what they are doing behind closed doors, torture, extreme poverty etc. While the business is going on nothing will be said and things can continue as they are, everyone concerned is aware of what is happening, they just choose to ignore it and if questioned on the subject will deny any knowledge. This happens time and time again.
Anyone who can speak openly from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait can tell you that this is the situation in their countries, but not many are able to speak freely. Although America and Britain would have you believe that nothing of the sort goes on in these countries, that Saddam in Iraq was the only one, it is not true. As I described earlier when you do business you are a friend and are not held accountable. Further proof of this is the situation of the Kurdish peoples, for many years America, Israel and Britain supported the Iraqi Kurdish in their fight against Saddam Hussein but on the other side of the Iraqi Border with Turkey are 17.5 million Kurdish. These Turkish Kurdish are denied any and all rights to their heritage, language and culture. To acknowledge ones Kurdish origins in Turkey is illegal, many have been imprisoned without trial or hearing, tortured and murdered.

{( New Iraq )}

The "Liberation" Dinar an hommage to Mr. Bush